cyberwar as launching a nuke. We saw what shutting down one pipeline for a couple days did. Now imagine similar and coordinated attacks across the energy sector, banking, health care, and transportation.

Maybe I've got too much confidence in our military readiness, but I expect we'd manage to shoot down most of the nukes that got launched. In reality we'd see a few metro areas vanish in a blink and several million dead, not the extinction of the USA, if Putin decided to push the button.

But we would know who did it. Our military would still be operationally effective, and it would likely pull what was left of this country back together in a way we haven't seen since WWII. We would recover. Eventually.

But a cyber war could systematically shut down our power grid, money supply, food distribution, and health care. It would likely kill as many of us as a nuclear launch could, it would just take longer. But the worst part is we'd kill ourselves for them and turn North America into a dystopia the likes of which you only thought possible in the movies. And that would be the end of the USA without a single bullet or missile being fired by Russia.

I guess then the question becomes, whose side would China be on? Ideologically, they probably get along better with Putin than with us. But we buy stuff. Without us as a customer, China probably collapses too.

Cheery thoughts.